Cloud computing, telework and data center consolidation–and a cross section of senior federal IT officials–took center stage at a conference yesterday to discuss ways to use information technology to reduce the total cost of government.
While nobody was willing to predict how the federal budget crunch was likely to impact specific government IT programs, most agreed that cloud computing, telework and data center consolidation are the three major initiatives that federal CIOs and managers must come to terms with in the coming budget cycle.
NASA CIO Linda Cureton, offered her government colleagues some blunt advice to reduce operating costs, in her opening remarks at the 3rdAnnual Lowering the Cost of Government with IT Summit, hosted by FedScoop.
“Downsize those data centers…get rid of them,” she said. Government agencies often use too much electricity keeping data centers “too cold” and even using the space for offices and trash storage. “That’s an expensive office space,” she said. “We’re paying a lot.”
Cureton also urged her federal colleagues to “lean forward and anticipate” requirements and trends in technology.
While she acknowledged that government processes for developing and implementing new IT strategies are unable to keep up with industry trends in technology, that may not be a bad thing when it comes to cloud computing. There are many government systems, she said, that are simply not suitable for cloud-based computing.
Cloud computing “is not a silver bullet to fix all of our problems,” said Cureton. “Some applications are meant to run on bare metal,” she said, referring to the federal government’s abundance of older, mostly COBOL-based mission-critical systems.
Bajinder Paul, deputy associate administrator at the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, agreed that while there are major optimization benefits associated with moving applications into the cloud there are still barriers, including human capital and governance issues, and security.
But those were barriers that the GSA overcame when it transitioned the federal government’s official Web portal, USA.gov, to a cloud environment, said Martha Dorris, who also serves as a deputy associate administrator for the GSA’s OCSIT.
“We had not received new funding…in years and years. I was in a corner with nowhere to go,” said Dorris. By moving the system to the cloud, however, GSA freed up $1.7 million per year that it was then able to invest in modernization efforts, she said.
“It wasn’t easy and there were a lot of cultural issues,” said Dorris. “We have server huggers alive and well still on the 11thfloor of our building…and they thought I was sending them to the moon” when the cloud infrastructure plan was announced, she said. It’s important to communicate to the rank and file that “jobs are changing,” Dorris said. “That doesn’t mean that they’re losing jobs, but your job will change.”
As much as the rank and file may have to accept that their jobs will change most of the speakers at this year’s conference agreed that government managers need to accept the changing nature of the workforce and the increasing importance of telework to the federal enterprise.
In the next 5 years, we are going to see a population of positions that are telework eligible from the point of hire.” – Danette Campbell
But based on the IT spending habits of many agencies, change is proving hard to implement.
“I get the distinct impression that the status quo hasn’t changed that much,” said Nigel Ballard, Director of Federal Marketing at Intel Corp. “You can’t telework with a desktop,” he said, but those are the systems on which the federal government is spending its money.
Telework, he said, is an important driver for “every government agency that wants to be competitive with industry” when it comes to recruiting the best and brightest employees.
But it’s been more than eight months since the Telework Enhancement Act was signed into law, requiring agencies to create policies governing telework for the 1.2 million federal employees that are eligible, and many agency telework programs are still in their infancy.
“People still view telework as a perk and not an asset,” said Justin Johnson, Deputy Chief of Staff at the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Management resistance and distrust of employees are the two main obstacles to the federal government’s adoption of telework, said Danette Campbell, Senior Telework Advisor at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which has 6,400 teleworkers across every business unit within the agency.
According to Campbell, USPTO saved $19.8 million by deploying 3,400 “hoteling” examiners. “If I had to bring these people back tomorrow, I’m going to have to come up with $20 million to house them,” said Campbell.
Like Ballard, Campbell agreed that telework is an important component of attracting the best talent into government – talent that is constantly being wooed away from government by corporate perks. Campbell is optimistic, however, that government will change its attitude toward telework.
“In the next 5 years, we are going to see a population of positions that are telework eligible from the point of hire,” she said.
“If every agency approached telework the way the [USPTO] has,” said Johnson, “you would see massive change.”